I chose to read Jack Bratich's "When Collective Intelligence Agencies Collide: Public vs. Popular Intelligence and Network Suspicions" from Post-Global Network and Everyday Life because it coincided with Andrejevic's iSpy, as well as my burgeoning interest in public memory. Typically, I avoid 9-11 research because I am weak and it makes me sad and frustrated in a non-constructive, debilitating way. I know that I should have a stronger constitution as an attempted scholar, but for some reason this affects my brain in the same way that math does: it should work but it doesn't. Additionally, I hate being lied to and everything surrounding 9-11 reads like a pack of lies, but voicing this concern renders you to the level of raving conspiracy theorist and disqualifies all of your opinions. And that is kind of what this chapter is about.
The term COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE (CI) is one that I think fits nicely with my understanding of affect. In summation, CI is the technologically enhanced, decision-making and community formation that works with the new models of belonging and organization. It works through digital interactivity in distributed knowledge and network forms like P2P sharing, feedback, interactive marketing, etc. (please refer to your Andrejevic for more examples, as well as a more cynical appreciation of these technologies). Pierre Levy, the cat who initially worked with the notion of CI suggests that "Intelligence as networked knowledge production will be the foundation for the reconstruction of the social bond," and JB insists that it is a "SPECIES response to power inequalities and the ruinous division of intelligence" (12). Not that we're keeping score and it's not like I am right, but I do feel a little vindicated with this last bit. Affect, and apparently collective intelligence, seem to be re-connecting human beings on a P2P level. Now JB talks a lot about intelligence in the chapter, but this usage seems a little bit different and I wonder if it might align with the national, ethnic, and religious divisions that Levy proposes.
Anyway, above I included the links for the major case study of the chapter and I definitely recommend giving them a gander. Especially because they are to be considered alongside the 9-11 Commission. Now I don't expect you to spend the weekend getting riled up over this info, but what you need to understand in terms of JB's chapter is that BOTH of these are networks of suspicion and attempting some level of collective intelligence. One works outside officially sanctioned knowledge (9-11 TM) and one works to craft intelligence as a repressive state apparatus (the commission). The former is "refuses to be recruited into a state identification" and the latter is a "project of constituting emergent norms and practices (e.g. investigation [like Andrejevic's lateral surveillance]) amidst the ruins of established institutions" (21). Importantly, while these networks are separate, both are weighing in on that pop culture battleground Stuart Hall talked about; they are attempting to restore society's sense of sovereignty or subjectivity in the post-9-11 world.
It's clear that I have fallen under Andrejevic's iSpy spell, but I really do feel like their are these threads running throughout our readings. In particular, technology and the anonymity, connectivity, interactive qualities within these networks are working to reform or reconstruct connections. I am still not sure if this process is wholly new or if it is a regurgitation of past plots to regulate subjectivities but with more bells and whistles.
There is a lot here and I'm still unraveling it a bit. This may require some later edits!
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